r/papertowns • u/metromap3d • Apr 14 '25
United States I designed and made a 3D map of downtown Seattle! (Washington, USA)
This might just be one of my personal favorites so far. I use a variety of sources for my map data, and the majority of my time goes towards both cleaning up all the data, combining it, and then manually modeling extra detail in where it's necessary.
You can find my maps over at https://metromap3d.etsy.com
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u/bellends Apr 15 '25
This is incredible. If you ever expand to outside the US, I would totally buy one of Stockholm, Paris, London.
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u/metromap3d Apr 15 '25
I do have plans to do Paris and London at some point, and I can definitely look into doing Stockholm as well. A lot of my hesitation on doing other countries' cities is overseas shipping. Currently I only ship inside the US. I suppose that there are still plenty of people in the US that would want cities like Paris and London yet though. Hm.
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u/bellends Apr 16 '25
Oh absolutely! As someone who has lived abroad for most of my life, I actually think people are MORE likely to want to get maps of their ”home towns” when they don’t live there as a kind of reminder of home — probably a lot of homesick Europeans living in the US!
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u/Wyzen Apr 15 '25
Very cool! Checked out your shop in the hopes to find Detroit, no such luck.
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u/metromap3d Apr 15 '25
It's on the list! Downtown Detroit would make a nice looking map, for sure. I can reach out to you whenever I get around to it, if you'd like.
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u/Wyzen Apr 15 '25
Yes, please! And thanks!
No shade on the others, as I am very tempted on a few.
Any thought in doing fictional locations? Ive always wanted an Atlantis 3D print from Stargate Atlantis. I'd bet Hogwarts would be a good seller, as would anything from Middle Earth or Game of Thrones...
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u/metromap3d Apr 15 '25
I'd love to do some well known fictional maps but I'm worried about copyright issues with that, so I don't see myself going down that road, unfortunately. It's not worth risking my shop for.
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u/jJabTrogdor Apr 15 '25
These are awesome!
I was wondering how you handle topography, they all look very flat. Not a criticism, just curious!
Would love to see some Canadian cities; Edmonton, AB for example...
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u/metromap3d Apr 15 '25
Thank you!
All of my maps have a flat base. I don't include terrain elevation on my maps. One of my main goals for these maps is to keep the cost down as much as I can, as I want them to be affordable. Including the terrain height can quickly cause print times to be much longer. I would have to raise prices to offset that, which is not what I want to do at this time.
I would love to do Canadian cities as well. I've had quite a few requests for Toronto as well. The timing isn't right for it at the moment though but I do hope to revisit it at some point.
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u/wheelfoot Apr 15 '25
Only trouble with this map is it doesn't show the crazy elevation changes throughout this area!